The Book
by The Night was Moist
Summary: They took her world, and then they took what she held most dear. But will her revenge be the most terrifying thing of all?


**Author's Note:** The protagonists are my original creations. But everything else belongs to H.P. Lovecraft.

**The Book**

We were close to the Mexican border when we realized we were being hunted.

"Shit," she said, dragging me under the cover of a tree just as the ship flew overhead. It was flying low, barely over top of the forest canopy.

"Did they see us?" I asked, panic gripping me.

Karen didn't answer, but she didn't have to. Almost immediately, the ship stopped in its tracks, rotated, and began to descend amid the trees, landing about a half mile away.

"Run!" she shouted, grabbing my hand. The two of us took off into the forest, running west when we were supposed to be going south. Usually, their ships just flew overhead at high altitudes. But this one obviously had something else planned, something involving us. We'd always been dreading a moment like this. We'd heard tales from other survivors, some of whom had been targeted, yet survived, while their companions and loved ones had not.

Karen and I had survived so much, it was hard to think it was coming to an end now. Yet in my gut that's what I believed as we scrambled through the forest, trying to go as fast as we could without tripping over bushes, logs and fallen branches. After a year of hard living, I was in better shape than I used to be, but I knew I couldn't run like this for long.

My fear was confirmed after only five minutes of dashing through the pine trees. Karen was in great shape; she was a natural athlete. But I could feel the fire in my chest begin to overwhelm my breathing. It didn't help that we'd been conserving our food and water and I was half malnourished to begin with. The heavy backpack wasn't helping either.

With a sob, I stopped in my tracks. In hindsight it wasn't the brightest idea. I could have at least kept walking quickly. But everything felt so hopeless.

"Aaliyah?" she asked.

"Just go, keep going," I replied through harsh, heavy breaths as I doubled over, trying to catch my wind.

"Fuck that," she said. "We're staying together."

"No," I replied, shaking my head through my heaving voice. "Keep going. Don't wait for me."

"Shut up, we're staying together," she replied forcefully. "Just take a breather and we'll go as fast as you can manage." She put her hand on my shoulder, and I almost broke down, the tears welling up. It was a bad time for me to have one of my emotional episodes, but I couldn't help it. The concern I saw in her eyes, the concern for me and not for her. She could abandon me, leave me to their mercy, but wouldn't.

"I'm so sorry, baby," I said, clutching my arms to myself. She just hugged me and whispered words of love and encouragement into my ear.

We stood there together for a minute or so. Then she unzipped my backpack and took out my water bottle. "Here," she said, holding it out to me. "Take a few sips and we'll get going."

I wiped the tears from my eyes and nodded. Taking the bottle, I brought it to my lips and took a few sweet sips.

That's when we heard it.

Rumbling. Like an avalanche or a boulder rolling down a hill. Rumbling. Deep in the direction from which we had come. We could hear trees being knocked over. We knew what it was. We ourselves hadn't encountered one. If we had, neither of us would likely be alive right now. But we knew what it was. We'd heard the survivors' tales. We knew.

I began to moan.

But Karen wasn't one to get hysterical. She was nothing like me, in other words. Grim-faced but determined, she looked in the direction from which it came and then she looked at me. "Here," she said, guiding me to a sizable rocky outcrop about twenty yards away. "Hide behind this."

"What?" I asked.

"Just hide. I'll distract it. Don't come out 'til it's gone."

"What? No, you can't!" I grabbed her arm and pulled on it. "Come on, let's go, I'm ready."

She shook her head. "We're not outrunning this, Aali. When it comes after me, you go. North, south, doesn't matter. Just get out of here."

"Karen, I—"

"There's no time!" She looked back and shook her head. The rumbling had grown even louder. Nearer. She grabbed my arms. "That thing we've talked about, you remember, right?" She tapped my backpack. "With the book."

"What?" I stared blankly but then realized there was only one thing she could really be talking about. One thing, besides which all other things paled. "Yeah, I remember. But-"

"Do it," she said, gripping my arms tightly, looking dead into my eyes. "Just fucking do it."

She kissed me on the lips, and then she let me go. She took off, running, weaving between the trees, yelling as she went, hoping to draw it away from my position.

I could—and should—have followed her. But the sad truth is, I didn't want to, I was so fucking scared. I just remained hiding behind the outcrop for ten, twenty, thirty seconds, crying softly like a coward as I heard the rumbling grow louder and louder until death finally rolled past me. Instead of pursuing me, death followed Karen, whose yells I could still hear faintly, intermittently in the distance.

It was less than a minute later when I realized I couldn't hear her anymore. Or it. Despite my sorry state, my survival instinct crept in. I knew I had to get moving. I ran north, the opposite direction of where we'd been heading. I ran and I cried, because she was gone and because I was so fucking afraid. I ran through the forest, not knowing precisely where I was going, just praying that there wasn't another one out there.

It wasn't long before I came to a steep hill. I paused momentarily, catching my breath, unsure if I should climb up or find some other way. After some hesitation, I decided to keep moving forward. The forest was a maze and I'd completely lost my bearings. Maybe a view from the top would give me some idea of where I was going.

I slowly ascended up the side, using thin branches to stop me from falling backward. It was hard work. Before long, my breath was screaming in my lungs.

When I finally got to the summit, I looked around.

If I hadn't looked around, if I had kept running, maybe things would've turned out a lot different. Maybe I wouldn't have heeded her final demand. Maybe I would've just forgot about it and tried to get on with my life. But no, I looked back. And this is what I saw.

In the distance below me was a clearing. In its center was their pentagon-shaped shuttle. There were three Elders standing right outside of it, their dark barrel-shaped bodies clearly distinguishable. I could see the shoggoth come into the clearing, a black viscous mass flowing out of the trees. It was the same one that had been chasing us. I knew this because entangled in its free flowing body was Karen.

She was still alive.

One of the Elders held out a stick-like arm and emitted a high pitched trill. Whatever it said, the shoggoth obeyed. Extending a pseudopod, it flung Karen to the ground. She landed not ten feet away from them.

There was nothing I could do. I thought of the book. So much power, yet so absolutely useless.

I helplessly watched as Karen tried to scramble back up and retreat into the woods. But before she was able to take a single step, one of the Elders raised some sort of device. A bright red ribbon of energy cut through the air...

...and sliced off her right leg.

Her screams filled the entire area. It was hard to see from that distance, but it looked like her wound wasn't bleeding. It was like the heat of the weapon cauterized her leg as it cut. I covered my mouth and moaned, closing my eyes, wishing the horrifying reality of it away.

But they were just getting started. They were sport hunters and she was the sport. If they had just wanted her dead, they could have instructed the shoggoth to kill on sight. But they wanted to inflict the pain in person. Just for fun.

Another energy ribbon sizzled in the air. There were more screams, and once again I moaned while I hid my face.

Seconds passed...and then more screams. I couldn't watch.

But then I heard.

"Do it!"

Two words. Two little words that meant the fate of the world. Again uttered from her mouth while she could still use it, forcing me to bring my head up. She was on her back, her voice raging at the sky.

"Do it, baby. Kill the fuckers!"

There was another flash of energy.

"Kill—!"

Silence.

Looking back, I wonder if those Elders were more than a little put off by the defiance of their chosen prey, and that's why they ended it quickly. I wasn't even sure if they could understand English...or any human language. But to see such gumption in a primitive pink skin must have disturbed even their fucked up psyches just a bit.

If so, they were right to be disturbed. Because I was still alive. And right then and there, I made my decision.

I was laying down flat, my stomach on the ground. They knew I was in the area and I couldn't let them see me. Slowly, I crawled backward, until I was sure I wouldn't be seen. And then I got up and moved on.

I kept going north, down the opposite side of the hill. If I was going to do what she asked, I needed to find a suitable location.

After that, I just kept walking and resting, walking and hoping. I hoped the shoggoth wasn't tracking me. I hoped I wouldn't hear any rumbling or hear the drone of a five-pointed shuttle descending in the sky towards me. But I didn't see or hear anything. Maybe they just went home after. Enough hunting for today.

Their mistake.

About twelve hours later, I came to an abandoned farmhouse, just after darkness fell. The place was actually quite clean. There were no animals in the barn, dead or otherwise. Someone must have let them out some time ago. Or maybe they just ate them. As for me, I had water and some long-expired granola bars in my backpack. I ate almost everything I had, and then I decided to roll out my sleeping bag on one of the upstairs beds and go to sleep.

But it's been about two hours now and I can't sleep.

I remember us taking shelter in a farmhouse much like this one, a loft much like this one. It's where I first told her the truth about the book. It was only a couple weeks after we first met, on the outskirts of a decimated Boston. In that space of time we'd become inseparable. In a world gone to hell, we were the only ones we trusted.

"You're saying it's magical?" She was skeptical, as she had every right to be.

"Yes. I guess that's what you'd call it. Let me show you." Despite my misgivings, I led her to the window. I'd sworn to my father to never reveal the book's secrets, just as he'd sworn to his father, and so on and so on. But it felt like the old rules, the old vows, no longer applied.

Not to mention, I really wanted to impress her.

I guided her to the window. "The book only works in specific places. It's tuned in to places where our reality stretches thin, where pockets of other realities brush up against our own. These areas are invisible to the naked eye...unless you're holding it."

With a bit of final hesitation, I put the book in her hand and then directed her eyes to the window. It was nice to have an excuse to touch her.

She gasped as she saw it...a red cloud-like pattern oscillating in the sky some miles away. I already knew it was there, for I had seen it earlier.

After that, she peppered me with questions. What is the book? Where did it come from? What is it used for? What can you do with it?

I answered all of her questions in turn. I told her that a man wrote it, a madman possessed by some dark power that later devoured him. I told her that it was written mainly in Arabic, but intermingled with an ancient language that few humans ever spoke. I told her that it contained secret histories of a cosmos that was far older and greater than anyone could truly comprehend.

I told her there were several copies of the book in existence, but that this was the original and the only one that actually worked, and by "worked" I meant that it contained _spells _that worked. I told her that that's how I survived the Blue Dots, the biological weapon that swept through the entire planet, killing over 99% of its human population. I told her I found a spell to shield me from it.

The more I came to know her, and love her, the more I shared what I knew. It was one night in particular, as we laid under the stars in our sleeping bags, when she asked me softly, "What can it do against them?"

"Huh?" I remember turning my head and looking at her.

"The book. What can it do?" She was staring upwards, but there were no stars in the sky. It was cloudy and pitch black.

"You mean, as a weapon?"

"Yeah."

"I...I don't know, really."

"Think about it," she said, leaning over and kissing my neck.

And so I thought about it, pouring through the book, researching and researching it. There were several spells that were capable of unleashing large-scale destruction, like contagion spells and full-force elemental spells. But we were talking about an advanced alien race, here. There was nothing I could pull out of my hat that would wipe them off the face of the earth…or blast them out of orbit. Furthermore, the magic was very difficult to control. It was likely we'd end up doing ineffectual damage to them while killing ourselves in the process.

In truth, the book's focus was less on destructive magic and more on magic that was utilitarian in nature. In other words, magic that could do things for you. Useful things. Insidious things. The book contained a treasure trove of these spells: spells of shielding, spells of transformation, spells of regeneration, spells of mental domination, spells of summoning, spells of knowing, spells of bridging...

...inter-dimensional bridging.

And thus it hit me one day. The solution. It involved a combination of two, perhaps three, fairly innocuous spells. The entire scheme was so simple, yet so unthinkable, that it was absolutely absurd.

That was about six months ago when I revealed the possibility to her. I didn't want to, but it was hard to keep things from her. We talked about it quite a bit after that, throwing arguments back and forth at each other, debating the ethics of it all, as we journeyed together across a depopulated America.

But now, as far as I'm concerned, the debate is over. It was ended by her death. She is still being cut to pieces in my mind. It happened this morning but it feels like it's happening now.

The irony is I thought I could be happy, even here in this world gone to hell. I'd finally found a girl that would love me—a strong, smart, beautiful girl. In all this death and devastation, she was a tonic, a salve.

And no, in the end, I wouldn't have done this. If she was safe and alive, even if she had insisted, I wouldn't have done this. I wouldn't have even dreamed of it, no matter what she wanted, because it would've meant the end of her. Instead, I would've thrown the book away, in a lake or something, when she wasn't looking. I would've just got rid of it and apologized later. That's what I would've done, and the world would never have known what was almost unleashed upon it.

But then those fuckers had to go and kill her.

I arise from the bed and go to my backpack. It is resting on some little girl's dresser. By the moonlight, I can see her smiling portrait, sitting there beside a jewelry box full of trinkets. I wonder if she is somehow still alive somewhere. If so, I wonder if she still smiles.

I open up the backpack and take out the book. The moment I touch it, the room fills up with energy, a shifting, vibrating cloud of red that was here all along. That's why I chose this place.

The word 'book' doesn't do it justice. It is a giant tome, over a thousand years old, bound in ancient cedar, covered by ageless dark leather, somehow indestructible. I am its last guardian.

I turn the cover and read the first word I see, automatically translating it in my mind.

_Necronomicon_

I feel like an ape with an atom bomb, the fate of millions held in the palm of one insignificant young woman. I ask my father's forgiveness as I flip through the pages, flip through scriptures that tell of ancient histories.

The scriptures tell of many things, such as the time when the Elders came down to our planet so long ago. They held dominion over this world, they and their abominations. They are virtually immortal, they are spread throughout the universe, and now they have returned to reclaim what they lost.

But there is another tale that the scriptures tell. Those millions of years ago, when the Elders held sway over a younger Earth, it is said that they drew the attention of a being from beyond this universe. The book says little about this being. It tells of its name, its visage, and its malevolent intent. But it doesn't say much, perhaps because it is so difficult to comprehend the origins and motivations of such an unfathomable entity.

In the end, all that matters is that this being and his spawn ran rampant over them. Despite their technology, despite their might, the Elders could not defeat this enemy. They could only survive it. Like tiny field mice, they could only scurry and hide and hope that the farmer and his cats would eventually tire of them and move on.

And so I think, perhaps humanity will likewise be able to scurry and hide. Perhaps it can somehow survive what is to come. And after the dust has settled, perhaps it can reclaim this world.

Perhaps.

And so I begin to utter the words, to find the path, to bridge the gulf, to prepare the way for this being, this weapon. My vengeance.

It is not long before the entire house starts to bend and curve, as reality itself turns inside out.

And with these words, perhaps my final words, I whisper...

"Yes, love. It is done."

**The End**


End file.
